They Changed It Now It Sucks /
Live-Action TV

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Note: This article lists examples which take place within fandoms; not the TV Trope's opinion as to whether a change is for the worse. TV Tropes doesn't have opinions. The focus is on over-reaction about minor changes.

During the Ray Combs era, there was some complaint of this when the Bullseye round was introduced. Tacked onto the beginning of the game, it dragged proceedings down by having contestants guess quick questions to put more money into their Fast Money bank. Due to slumping ratings, a number of Celebrity editions ensued, and original host Richard Dawson was brought back in an attempt to save the show. However, Dawson was very well past his prime, looking tired and overweight and lacking the wit of his earlier days. Combined with a cheap digital board, a reduction of families to four teams, and repeated cancellations due to the OJ Simpson trials, Feud was off the air again in a year.

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The survey questions, progressively since the current version began in 1999, but especially since Steve Harvey took over in 2010, have become increasingly Hotter and Sexier. The point of contention was pedestrian questions such as "Name something that a clown takes off after his show ends" becoming "Name something a woman would take off a clown before having sex with him." While outrageous answers have always been possible with even the most mundane questions, they are regular occurrences on virtually every episode of the Harvey era.

For many years, Wheel of Fortune had a $10,000 cash prize on the wheel which was notably hard to get since its wedge was one-third the width of the rest, with a skinny Bankrupt on each side. This was replaced with a $1,000,000 wedge, which is part of a very convoluted Double Unlock schematic to win $1,000,000 in the Bonus Roundnote (the $1,000,000 has been won three times, in October 2008, May 2013, and September 2014). Another hated change is the increase in Prize Puzzles, which have often led to contrived-sounding solutions and Golden Snitch scenarios (typically, whoever wins the Prize Puzzle wins the game).

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A season of American Ninja Warrior got a lot of flak from fans due to changing the format of the third round elimination from eliminating based on performance to a more typical reality TV-based elimination (complete with teams and voting), believing that it goes against all that Ninja Warrior is about. The idea of boot camp itself, however, is much better received.

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The attitude of the hardcore Price fanbase spread to the GSN revival of Pyramid, when it was announced that Mike Richards, the producer of TPIR who is blamed for "unpopular" changes, would be the new host. Anyone would be doomed to comparison to Dick Clark, of course, but there were people who swore they'd never watch the new series just because of their feelings about Richards and TPIR. As it is, The Pyramid has proven to be one of the better game show revivals of the post-1980s world. Though there are parts of the fandom with nitpicks, such as the classic theme being reworked...in post-production, as the classic 1982-91 version had been the one used during tapings. These complaints quickly faded when The Pyramid uneventfully died after only one season, only for ABC to provide a well-received revival in 2016.

Almost any game show revival or revival attempt by Fremantle Media (previously Pearson Television and All-American Television) since 1996 can fall under this category...especially Match Game, Card Sharks, and Temptation. Even Family Feud took about seven years to find its footing amid mediocre hosts and broken rules (from the Louie Anderson era to the first Richard Karn season, the family with the most points won, making Round 4 the only one worth winning). Game show fans can be infuriatingly hard to please, but in this case they had a point.

Prior to this season, the Tournament of Champions (and Celebrity Jeopardy!), Teen Tournament, College Championship, and Seniors Tournament were respectively held in the sweeps periods of November, February, May, and July. note During season 12, tournaments began being shifted to a fluid, irregular schedule, with the Teen and College tournaments switching places, the Seniors Tournament being demoted to December for its final installment, and the first International Tournament debuting that July. Tournaments continue to be booked on a fluid basis, though almost always during the aforementioned sweeps periods.

Starting in the 2000-01 season, players no longer walked onstage in their introductions, and the Teen Tournament winner was no longer invited to the Tournament of Champions.

The 2001-02 season introduced the "Clue Crew", a group of Lovely Assistants who present even more video clues, the doubling of clue values, which some believe is unfair in regards to ranking all of the show's top money winners, and Alex Trebek shaves off his iconic mustache.

The 2003-04 season removed the 5-game limit for winners, which led to Ken Jennings' 74-game winning streak lasting into the next season.

The 2008-09 season removed the classic "clue pop-in" sound, and after a season without any popping-in effect, was replaced by another sound effect in the 2009-10 season.

Some also complain that the show has gotten easier over time, thus overlapping with It's Easy, So It Sucks!. To be fair, this one is very much a Justified Trope; anyone who's watched the show for a long period of time is pretty much guaranteed to find it gradually easier to play along, because they'll constantly be learning from it.

Another major complaint is that the writing has gotten too convoluted and "cutesy", with clues often trying way too hard to "tease out" the right answer by way of wordplay. Other clues seem to be written too vaguely, leading viewers to question whether or not another answer might be acceptable. The decline in clue quality is often thought to have started when longtime clue writer Steven Dorfman died in 2004.

The 2014-15 season removed the co-champion rule, where players tied for first place could each return the next day to play. All ties are now decided by tie-breaker questions, though none occurred until March 1, 2018.

Telly Addicts was a popular British quiz show in which two teams of four sat in comfortable sofas and armchairs to answer nostalgic questions about vintage television asked by Noel Edmonds from another comfy armchair. The rounds were changed on a regular basis, but the show kept going in this same basic format for 12 series. Series 13 saw the comfortable furniture replaced with awkward-looking chrome stools and Edmonds and the contestants running pointlessly between the different cheap-looking sets the different rounds were based in to play games with a tenuous TV connection. There was no series 14.

Countdown got this when Rachel Riley replaced Carol Vorderman as hostess. Also to some extent when Des Lynam replaced Richard Whiteley as presenter after Whiteley died.

Other television series:

Some say this happened to Whose Line Is It Anyway? when it moved from British to American TV. Common reasons given include the changing of hosts from Clive Anderson to Drew Carey, the appearance of more celebrity guests (especially Richard Simmons), and the fact that Colin and Ryan were in every single episode (and Wayne was in most of them as well) instead of taking more risks and shuffling the cast around more, as they did in the earlier British seasons.

A lot of fans decided they hated Mock the Week when Frankie Boyle left. On the official Facebook page for the show, comments are still in the vein of "OMG WHERES FRANKIE IT SUX WITHOUT HIM".

This has happened to Doctor Who multiple times. This is a series that's had many complete turnovers in the regular cast - including, of course, the lead actor - and over a dozen different showrunners with wildly varying approaches. Years before the new series debuted, there was a running joke on one of the online discussion groups that the series was ruined when they added the time-travelling alien to a perfectly good show about a policeman walking through the fog and hearing a strange noise. When the new series was in production, fans found lots of things to complain about, one of the most infamous being the enlarged TARDIS windows. The series itself eventually made fun of this point, with a character commenting that the TARDIS can't be a real police box, because "the windows are too big". New Doctor, new companion, new TARDIS exterior and interior, new sonic screwdriver, new showrunners. Matt Smith received a fair amount of hate just for not being David Tennant, and Peter Capaldi likewise for not being Smith, though to some extent this has happened to every new Doctor since William Hartnell first left the role (it's just been amplified due to there being more outlets for expressing opinion). There's also the hate over the increasingly romantic and sexual nature of the Doctor's relationships with his female companions. There's the theme tune which, when it became very orchestrated from 2005 on, many fans decried that it had lost its original electronic feel. The show is apparently ruined forever for everybody. Lampshaded way back in the day: "Oh, I see you've been doing the TARDIS up a bit! I don't like it." (The gag was repeated in the 50th Anniversary Special.) Any changes to the status quo (something done with regular frequency in the revival) also raises fan ire, especially if it violates "fanon" (fan-created canon assumptions). Many fans preemptively took this attitude towards the increasingly-mooted idea of the Doctor someday changing genders...

It's fair to say that many fans who were brought up on the original cheap 'n' cheerful production values prior to the '90s hiatus found the New Who revival hard to get into: complaints include its being too perfectly glossy and Americanised, too over-intellectualised, too long, not on on early Saturday evenings in nice half-hour-long serial chunks like it ought to be...

Our Miss Brooks: The controversial final (1955-1956) television season. Marriage to Mr. Boynton has always been her series goal. Executive Meddling saw Miss Brooks take a new job teaching at a private elementary school when Madison High was suddenly ordered torn down for a new freeway (somehow Madison High had ended up in Los Angeles after always previously been in the Madison). Miss Brooks found herself chased by the school's gym teacher. The new format was unpopular among show fans, and even Eve Arden herself. Mr. Boynton was brought back toward the end of the season in response to popular demand, and the last few episodes saw Miss Brooks pursue him as of old.

Canon Discontinuity is at play here. The events of the final television season were ignored on the radio season, where Miss Brooks continued at Madison as per normal. The program ended with a theatricalseries finale that, again, ignored the final television season, and concluded the story at Madison High School (which was in the City of Madison and definitely not in Los Angeles!).

Many fans of Skinshated the second-generation cast. Your mileage may vary on that one, as the second generation is still beloved by many. Then there's the third generation...

Fans' general responses to the second season. Some elements of the series are altered drastically with the advent of World War One, although a great deal remains the same which, in turn, has spawned an outcry from other portions of the fandom who protest that the narrative glosses over or speeds by too many major global events to be considered realistic. Sadly, this is an unfortunate but unavoidable side-effect of setting a drama series during a time of extreme social and political upheaval.

Series 3 with the deaths of main characters Sybil and Matthew, though the latter was helped by being a complete case of Real Life Writes the Plot: the actor wanted to leave, and since there was no way they could sell Matthew and Mary splitting up after their growing romance had been such a major story element, killing him was the only option.

Knight Rider fans have a bad habit of becoming homicidally enraged at any changes from the original source material in the various Revival attempts of the series, even such changes as would be necessary to compensate for the fact that (a) it's no longer 1982 and (b) the Pontiac Trans Am has been out of production for several years. A new revival premiered in February 2008 and, months before, fans had already taken note of several dozen reasons it was sure to suck. Of course, it did eventually turn out to suck anyway, but that doesn't make it right.

The 2003 "re-imagining" of Battlestar Galactica, generally considered excellent Adaptation Distillation and Darker and Edgier done right, was met with a lot of backlash by fans of the 1978 original. It was even met with backlash by original cast member Dirk Benedict, who wrote a rant on how changing his Loveable Rogue character Starbuck into a woman (and thus making the character something other than Han Solo) had somehow destroyed the character and ruined the show forever. Benedict has railed on record numerous times about the "feminization of TV", and suggested once that if The A-Team were to be made now it would be called "The Gay Team". What can be inferred from that combined with his love of very large cigars is debatable.

The Dresden Files made a lot of (author-approved) changes when it made it to TV. Interestingly, it was the little changes that got lambasted the most: Harry Dresden no longer wore a trenchcoat (they didn't want him looking like an Angel ripoff) and didn't drive the same car (while it might look good in text, a 6+-foot man can't drive a compact; it just doesn't work) and they changed his staff to a hockey stick to try and "hide" the fact that he's a wizard (kind of strange for someone who advertises in the yellow pages). At that point, it's not a cosmetic change but a completely different character with the same name.

Stargate Atlantis has a fandom that's divided between froth-at-the-mouth fans who enjoy the show and froth-at-the-mouth ex-fans that decry all of the advances made in Season 4. Stargate forums aren't happy places to be anymore...

The franchise fanbase had people who liked or simply didn't mind the new direction Stargate Universe took. Then there were people who, at seemingly every new mention of Universe, were ready with "This isn't the Stargate I grew to love!" or "I want Atlantis back!" Of course, there's also those "OH GOD! That's it! I'm not watching it." people. While it's not necessary to watch a show to complain about it, it does help. This isn't the same show as SG-1 or Atlantis, nor is it supposed to be, but there are people who will hate it for not being SG-1 or Atlantis

...and then Universe was canned due to bad ratings, but not before being retooled to roll back much of the new direction. The showrunners promoted season 2 by saying that they fixed the serious problems with season 1, so perhaps the viewers who thought season one was flawed television in real time had reason to stop watching.

Season 9 of Stargate SG-1 got a lot of flak at the beginning for even continuing on after the Goa'uld were defeated at the end of the previous season, and coming up with a new main villain  not to mention O'Neill leaving the show and Mitchell joining as the new leader of SG-1. Carter being temporarily absent from the show for the first five episodes didn't help matters, either. The changes were so extensive that the Powers That Be had actually considered changing the show's title to "Stargate Command" and treating Season 9 as the first season of a new show  and it's possible that if they'd done that, the changes might have actually been better received.

Anything from Super Sentai ported to Power Rangers that isn't 100% true to source is grounds for gasping and fist-shaking. Admittedly, some of it is worthy of decrying, but getting in a tussle because the heroes don't say "Henshin"? Or that they don't have the same morphers? Check out Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, and you'll have numerous people hating it because it's not Japanese. Amusingly enough, Dragon Knight was imported back to Japan, and they loved it.

Power Rangers and Super Sentai have their fair share of complaints towards their format shifts on their own. There are people who are under the mentality of First Installment Wins; that everything after MMPR pales in comparison, people who think that the Post-Zordon Era pales in comparison to everything from before or isn't "canon" (including Jonathan Tzachor), people who hate the Disney seasons compared to the previous Saban seasons, people who don't like the Neo Saban Era, and people who go by which showrunner they prefer. Sentai tends to vary by the season, as the motifs, season writing, characterizations, and comparisons to previous great seasons can make people not like the current seasons for whatever reason.

Kamen Rider Hibiki was ruined in the eyes of execs due to the fact it had a female rider on TV (Femme was officially the first female rider, but Shuki was the first to appear on TV), something that is considered "taboo" with Kamen Rider (most females who had to transform had to rely on an "anybody can use Transformation Trinket or is a rubber monster"). Needless to say, among the things the execs associated with the failure of the later season of Hibiki was a female rider.

Kamen Rider has a parody in the comedic net movies for the 40th-Anniversary movie. Kamen Rider 1 delivers a speech in which he says that the younger Riders who aren't "real" Kamen Riders because they aren't tragic cyborgs and none of them (save Hibiki) has undergone Training from Hell, unlike the classic Riders.

The Discworld TV adaptations. Many fans loved them, but there were some criticisms that Teatime should have been more obviously insane and less obviously insane in the same discussion. But Hogfather got off lightly compared to The Colour of Magic where, in addition to Rincewind being "too old", the creators committed the ultimate sin of getting rid of the aeroplane scene (a totally unnecessary sequence in which most of the comedy occurs inside Rincewind's head in any case). The fact that Terry Pratchett had approved these changes was claimed as evidence he doesn't understand his own books.

Legend of the Seeker got oodles of this from fans who object to, among many other things: changes to Richard's relationship with Zedd, moving Richard's father's death to after he meets Kahlan, and changing the main villain's hair color. Indeed, it got so much of this that the outcry and negative press from the They Changed It, Now It Sucks! crowd is sometimes blamed for killing the TV show after the second season. What fans fail to realize is that airing the show in a format truly faithful to the books would've been nearly impossible on network television. Many complaints, like the overall Hercules or Xena tone of the show and others, are perfectly valid...but when you're adapting a series as filled with violence and adult situations as Sword of Truth for basic cable, a Pragmatic Adaptation is the best you're going to get.

MST3K was accused of this with every cast change, especially when Joel left. One story told in their Amazing Colossal Episode Guide was about a viewer who sent in a yards-long, computer-printed banner reading "I HATE TOM SERVO'S NEW VOICE", after Josh Weinstein left and Kevin Murphy took over Tom's controls in Season 2. The crew hung the banner up in their offices, amused more than anything at the idea that somebody went to the trouble and expense of producing this massive missive instead of just sending a letter. Who knew that in these days, ventriloquism could be such Serious Business?

Because of copyright issues, Iron Chef had to change the music. Some people refused to watch the show afterwards because "it's not the same without the Backdraft music".

The CBS Evening News post-Walter Cronkite, particularly as Dan Rather's tenure coincided with increasing ratings declines and the infamous Bush documents scandal. Cranked Up to Eleven with the further declines under Katie Couric, but it seems to be getting better under Scott Pelley.

It was somehow believed Spock was the typical Vulcan personality despite him, his father Sarek, and Tuvok of Voyager being about the only noble (and well-acted) Vulcans in the franchise. Otherwise, most other Vulcans encountered had all of the arrogance and nothing to back it up. Some fans were angry that it contradicted the "fact" that Spock was the first Vulcan in Starfleet. Since obviously no Vulcan joined Starfleet between the founding of the Federation to Spock, and the all-Vulcan ship crew from TOS must have all joined after Spock. Besides, T'Pol wasn't even a Starfleet officer (she was given an honorary rank later, but not even a uniform).

Untrue, T'Pol actually was a Starfleet officer; in the 4th season (2154-55), she received a commission in the United Earth Starfleet with the rank of Commander, and stayed so until 2161, when the service was subsumed into the Federation, at which time (in the admittedly less than canon books) she was promoted to Captain.

Perhaps the funniest complaint overall was that humans would not have encountered Klingons yet because it was "canon" that first contact with the Klingons occurred in the early 23rd century. This bit of fanon exists thanks to the Star Trek Chronology, a book by Michael and Denise Okuda that attempts (with questionable success) to fit all Trek history into a proper timeline. The Okudas state right in the introduction that they were often forced to use conjecture and that while the book attempts to stay within canon it cannot, in and of itself, be considered canon, nor should it override any canonical information that might be presented later. The Chronology arbitrarily assigned the date of first contact to 2218, due to McCoy's line in a third-season episode (which the chronology puts in 2268) concerning "fifty years of unremitting hostility" between Starfleet and the Klingon Empire. Only a giant leap of logic could twist that line into a definite date of first contact, and yet fans have done just that, with many even insisting that Captain Picard later confirms this by quoting the year in the episode "First Contact" (not to be confused with the film of the same name). In fact, Picard never quotes a year, but makes a general reference to "centuries ago", which is very much in line with the first encounter we actually saw.

There's the "remastered" TOS. Better special effects (with extreme pains taken to make sure no actual events are altered) that sometimes fit the original script better than the original version (due to problems the original faced like "low budget" and "it being the 1960s") are an unforgivable sin, apparently. Despite the fact that one can watch the original unedited versions on the Blu-ray if one so desires.

And now the cycle is continuing with Star Trek: Discovery. Complaints include that it's "another" prequel (more like an Interquel), that the visual and make-up techniques actually look like something that might be produced this century rather than the hokey plywood-and-plaster of the 60's, that the Klingons have been altered too greatly, that the lead character isn't the ship's captain, that the characters aren't just fill-in-the-blanks members of the senior staff, that the series is serialized rather than just solving the "problem of the week" with the occasional arc that Trek has utilized so far, etc., etc. The Internet Backdraft has been rather severe, often turning molehills into mountains, all before the first episode aired.

Saturday Night Live has been accused of sucking because of its small-scale and large-scale changes in cast and crew. Due to the show's cyclical nature, the cast has been rotating ever since Season 2 (when Chevy Chase was replaced by Bill Murray). The accusations still exist today, ironically with fans claiming that the show needs a cast and crew overhaul, only this time with more talented people  whatever that means to them. While most of these accusations can be chalked up to certain fans overreacting, some are controversial within the fanbase (like the near-universally panned 1980-81 season which resulted in most of the cast being fired, and the 1994-95 season which was hit hard by Phil Hartman's departure; backstage tensions between writers and cast members; thin and humorless sketches heavily based on Ho Yay, Vulgar Humor, OverlyLongGags, and the O.J. Simpson trial; and cast members that didn't gel well with others). Step into any online thread discussing the show (or better yet, read some of the show's complaints on any comment section on NBC's SNL web page) today, and you'll usually find someone complaining about how the show was "better five years ago" or "hasn't been funny since [former cast member] was on the show."

SCTV (the Canadian equivalent of SNL) drew fire from viewers when it show moved from its Sunday-night slot on NBC (where it was competing against SNL) to the Cinemax pay cable channel for Season 4. The show petered out amid criticism of most of the cast having left (along with most of the most memorable characters) and was canned for good afterward...never mind that the entire reason this move happened was because of Executive Meddling on the part of NBC.

When Degrassi: The Next Generation changes seasons, they change the opening credits theme. No matter how they change the opening credits fans decree it's wrong. When for the most part the themes aren't that separated from one another (same words, different singers/melody). With the exception of two seasons that completely draw away from the standard opening setup, they're mostly the same...but each season starts with a fan outcry to begin World War III over it.

The television adaptations of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple novels can receive this treatment, although not without good reason. In particular, the Marple adaptations starring Geraldine McEwan have been known to take great liberties with the original source material, adding in plots and characters which were not present in the originals. Conversely, the Poirot adaptations starring David Suchet have generally remained faithful to the novels, but they've also made certain changes in style, setting, and approach (the stories all take place in a general Genteel Interbellum Setting rather than across the period of 191670 as with the originals) that have come under criticism. In particular, the adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd came under fire for this; the original does, however, hinge on a narrative technique that is rather more difficult to replicate in live action.

When The ABC chose to hire a new host for the popular gaming show Good Game, it meant they had to farewell longtime host Jeremy "Junglist" Ray. Fans erupted with emphatic disdain, spamming the forum with hate for the new host, Stephanie "Hex" Bendixsen, and crying that they would never watch Good Game again, or until Junglist came back. They started a Facebook page (since renamed with its cause given up) and a website (formerly at savejunglist.com, but that's been been bought out by one of those spam search engine or domain parking sites). The cause was forgotten little more than a fortnight later. That doesn't stop the Fan Dumb whining about how bad the show has become during every week's feedback board on their forum.

Human Target added two new main characters and changed the dynamic of the show in Season 2. This is not universally loved. At all. While new showrunner Matt Miller thought getting rid of Bear McCreary, bringing in Chuck composer Tim Jones, and increasing the amount of "needle-drops" in the matter of said show were good ideas, many fans disagreed strenuously.

All things considered, HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's epic fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire into Game of Thrones has done far, far less straying from the source material compared to almost anything else on this list. Even three seasons in, the main plot and most of the side plots are progressing just as they should, though there have been increasing liberties taken each season, most of which are listed on the show's own page. Despite the fact that most of the changes are inconsequential, and the major characters are mostly just the same, the amount of nerdrage this has engendered could power a city. Regardless, there are certain things that were changed that people are more likely to agree on. However, some changes are hard to swallow for book fans: for example, removing The Reveal surrounding Tysha, Tyrion's dead wife gets this treatment, thanks to this putting a major part of Tyrion's backstory completely up in the air; is it still the way it was in the books, or was she really just a prostitute? This feeling has gotten worse however, as Seasons 4 and 5 proceeded, with some storylines being cut, others being made up out of whole-cloth and significant characters either being sidelined, cut or even killed off.

It doesn't help that the show has now far outpaced Martin's books in the storynote and that at this pace, the books may never be finished; fans now argue about what the show does versus what they believe will/should happen in the books, leading to further base-splitting. Of particular note are factions who insist that Stannis is the ultimate king and therefore won't burn his daughter as a sacrifice or get killed; those who think that the series couldn't possibly end with something as "simple" as fighting off the White Walkers; and an even more extreme set who believe that the showrunners are actively out to hurt the fanbase and ruin the story.

Smallville was this to the Superman mythos. No matter what they did, it was inevitable that some faction of the fanbase would be infuriated by the writers' interpretations of the Superman comics. Inevitably, fans would accuse the writers of "not being true to the source material"...never mind the fact that the comics themselves have changed continuities/canon drastically over and over again. In general, the Smallville writers seemed to be going for a sort of mixture of ideas from all eras/versions of the Superman mythos (Lex living in Smallville was from the Silver Age, the Fortress of Solitude design from the Chris Reeve films, Brainiac being from Krypton was borrowed from Superman: The Animated Series, etc.). The thing is, fans of one era/version of the mythos would always be angered when another era/version was used as inspiration.

The 7th season episode "Action" contained an in-universe example. An actress is almost killed during the filming of a comic book adaptation. Twice. Turns out there was a lot of online controversy over the fact her character is Spared By Adaptation, and someone, apparently, is upset enough to try fixing it. One of the attempts is actually by rigging the scene where she is killed in the original material.

Heroes Season 3 was regarded as a pretty good season...except for the fact that they killed off two universally popular characters in Daphne and Elle. Season 4 looked like it would have an example of changing something for the better by bringing back previously killed character Charlie, but proceeded to mess it up immensely.

iCarly and its change in focus from comedy to a five-part romantic arc for the Sam/Freddie pairing has been called this. The horrible ratings (bottom five out of 40 episodes with ratings information) for the 3rd episode (it was beaten by Victorious) would seem to confirm the wider audience thinks so as well.

Survivor has suffered a LOT of this at the hands of fans. First, there are certain fans who automatically dismiss any season that took place after Season 7 (the season before All-Stars). This is due to the shift in editing on the producers part, where after Season 7 they started to focus more and more on the strategy of the players and "shocking" twists at the expense of everything else. According to these purists, everything from production values to the intro credits to just plain storytelling ability has gone down the toilet since then. In particular, the final three has been argued as not working as it was intended. Instead of making it harder for a dominant player to take another unlikable player to the finals and win the game easily, not only have two dominant players managed to drag along goats and win that way with a final three anyhow, giving the jury a third option on who to vote for has been said to give the jury the option of voting for players who could basically sit pretty and do nothing the entire game (as opposed to the moral dilemma usually faced by final two juries). Even people who enjoy the newer seasons have been turned off by host Jeff Probst's favoritism towards certain players from the most recent seasons, like Coach, Russell Hantz, and Boston Rob just to name a few.

This has been the attitude of quite a few CSI fans since Grissom left and was replaced by Ray Langston. Later inverted in the eyes of some, who feel that Ted Danson's arrival made things a lot better.

Bones, post Season 6. Some fans started the ruined cries after Booth/Brennan happened onscreen and Brennan got pregnant.

Deadliest Warrior Season 3 was very different from the first two  the hosts were changed, the directing was different, the company that controlled the show was different, the scoring system was "updated", and the experts view everything about the warriors (they claim to view 100 "x-factors", one about the diet of the warrior). Many fans claim that the show is so different that it feels like an entirely different show altogether, and protested about these changes. Although Deadliest Warrior still had a large audience, the series was canned after this season.

Elementary was boycotted even before the release from potential fans. A modernized retelling of Sherlock Holmes. Set in New York City. With a former Scotland Yard consultant, fresh-out-of-rehab Sherlock. And a female Watson who's not a ex-army doctor, but an ex-surgeon who lost her license after a patient died. Suffice it to say, the changes made to the story of Sherlock Holmes make people's fears understandable. Some of the hate is coming from the Sherlock fans, due to their preferences of the characters. some is also coming from fans of different adaptations: the Nigel Bruce version of Watson was unattractive, old and not physical, and the Basil Rathbone version of Sherlock wasn't a jerk, but at least cared for Watson. The Jeremy Brett version was rude to everyone, including Watson, and the David Burke version's nowhere nearJude Law and Martin Freeman.

Supernatural Season 4 saw a lot of this in the fandom with the introduction of Castiel and the angels. It happened again in reverse in Season 7 when they were taken out of the picture.

Any time anything or anyone was added to or removed from the premise of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show lost support from a corner of its viewing audience. A large portion of the fandom refused to acknowledge the comics as part of BTVS canon.

The television version of Cadfael is an appalling example of Adaptation Decay completely altering characterizations and the entire force of the plots. And then there's the casting...

The football-based show The Game (2006) suffered from this. Fans demanded the show return after it was cancelled when the third season ended. They moved the show to BET, much to the fans' joy. However, when the fourth season premiered, the quality in the writing wasn't as strong as the last seasons and the season finale met with a huge backlash. In later seasons, the main couple the show was originally about are no longer in the cast.

New York Undercover was a highly popular cop show on Fox. It had the same theme as Law & Order and other themed dramas. However, what made the show stick out was that the two main cops were of different ethnic backgrounds  one African-American, the other Latino. Enter Season 3, where the show introduced an Irish cop to join the other two. This alone wasn't the problem, but as time went on the Irish cop became the main character and the two original cops were pushed to the background. As a result, many fans abandoned ship and at the end of Season 3, the show killed off the Irish guy and the Latino guy. They then retooled it for Season 4 into a show where the African-American and the Latina they'd introduced in Season 2 were part of some sort of elite squad. The only thing that remained the same was the fill music in transitions, which now seemed way out of place. It didn't last till midseason.

X-Play: Name a change, fans protested it loudly. The move to Los Angeles, the set changes, the move away from the comedy sketches, the de-emphasis on the reviews and increased focus on news segments, the loss of the nameless announcer, the addition of Blair Herter and Adam Sessler leaving. And those same complainers were out in force to lament the loss of the show when it was canned in January 2013.

Two and a Half Men lost a lot of fans in Season 9 after Charlie Sheen was fired (the circumstances of his firing being rather shady didn't help) and replaced with Ashton Kutcher. Many feel that while Kutcher is a good actor, his character Walden Schmidt just doesn't fit into the show very well at all. Many people also felt that the comedy took a turn for the worse, as it started relying far too heavily on Toilet Humor (one episode had Lindsay vomiting practically nonstop for nearly the entire running length) and the characters were all hit hard with Flanderization  Alan rivaled Charlie in terms of Jerk Ass behavior, Berta suddenly got a crush on Alan, Jake became a listless stoner, Rose became too mean, and characters like Judith and Herb weren't seen at all for whatever reason. The disappointment in the show is reflected by the sharp drop in ratings throughout the season after the premiere.

WWE: From "Attitude Era" to "PG Era", no blood, no sexual content, no swearing, and John Cena.

The BBC News channel came in for a bit of this since moving from Television Centre to Broadcasting House in March 2013. Some viewers didn't like the new open-plan newsroom because all the activity in the background was distracting.

BBC weather forecasts came in for criticism several years earlier when they dropped the old weather symbols. The maps used following the change were also criticized for using an angled projection of Britain that made the south of England look bigger in proportion to Scotland.

Red Dwarf Series VII. At the time it came out in 1997, the show had been on hiatus for four years. Co-creator Rob Grant had left the show, but generally speaking fans were expecting something in the style of Series VI. But then Chris Barrie only committed to appearing in half the episodes. Kochanski was also introduced as a new main cast member and adding a lady changed the dynamic a lot. And new writers were hired to co-write the scripts. And the old visual-effects model shots were replaced with CGI. And the show shifted away from its sitcom roots to a comedy-drama. Cue backlash. note (It's worth noting that some of the decisions that caught the most flack were things the show's creators were basically forced into. The CGI, for instance, was a last-minute replacement after scheduling errors in the model shoot.)

Probably one of the most common instances of this trope involving several shows is music replacement. Because of the high price for rights issues when using licensed music, more often than not the home video versions of several shows as recent as the early 1990s will replace tracks with generic synthesized music in its place since it's a lot cheaper. Numerous shows have had this happen, such as Quantum Leap, 21 Jump Street, The Fugitive, and The A-Team, and as you can imagine fans of these shows and others were pissed. A long-term casualty of this was Married... with Children: because of Sony losing the rights to use the Frank Sinatra song "Love and Marriage" which had been the show's theme for its entire 11-year run, the season sets on DVD instead used a cheap knockoff of the theme instead.

True Detective. Season 1 was widely acclaimed. Being a long-form anthology series, however, the second season saw a complete change in the cast and storyline. It wasn't as warmly received with critics and fans expressing hope that the third season would feature the original cast from year 1.

The 1999 version of ZOOM was hit with this pretty hard in its final season, in which among other things, the kids would no longer introduce themselves, the theme was remixed, the credits contained different footage, the set was slightly different, and there was a new outro where the ZOOMers would come out and say, "That's the end of our show!"

Season 3 had previously changed a lot of things, but didn't fare quite as badly, likely due to the fact that the second season didn't quite live up to the first and lowered expectations somewhat.

Count Arthur Strong is a Sound to Screen Adaptation of Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show!, but relocates the action from Doncaster to London and features an entirely different supporting cast, some of whom even get their own storylines independent of the title character. Some fans of the radio show (and of the original stand-up incarnation) were less than pleased.

Sesame Street. By its very nature, Sesame Street has to be constantly changing and evolving, as it's a non-profit show intended to be educational for preschoolers. The trouble comes when a viewer grows up and tunes in (often with their own kids) and finds out that the show isn't a carbon copy of what they grew up on and loved.

In the 1990s, Elmo received his own half-hour segment, considerably slowing the breakneck pace and kitchen-sink randomness of the show's structure. Of course, "Elmo's World" is no longer part of the show, and many kids who grew up on it now miss it.

Around Season 40, it was declared that no sketches filmed before 1990 would be included in modern episodes. This essentially obliterates the presence of the late Jim Henson and Richard Hunt from the show.

And now, Season 46 is going to be possibly the biggest game-changer in the show's history. A move to HBO, reduction to a half-hour format, and the mission statement "fewer puppets, fewer parodies", which has made adult fans upset in particular. This is a reaction to changing demographics (fewer stay-at-home parents means less than 30 percent of children now watch Sesame Street with their parents, making Parental Bonus far less important to the show). This coming on the heels of several high-ranking performers leaving the show with varying degrees of grace hasn't helped. In the same season, Elmo's World returned, but was shortened to seven minutes to fit the half-hour timeslots. Sesame Street fans who were in favor of the segment weren't pleased, as some of the cuts in the segments were easily noticed by viewers.

With the Mythbusters revival. Seriously. A large number of fans can't wrap their head around the Out-of-Genre Experience for just one season and the change of hosts and are calling it by this trope and would rather leave the show dead. Observe.

House of Anubis was hit with this before the third season even started, with the news that lead actress Nathalia Ramos would not be returning to the show. This, in turn, caused some fans to then complain that Eddie, the new main character, was ruined by having his bad-boy traits from the second season downplayed to make him more similar to Nina.

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